Beginning of the End Days

“The sky doesn’t seem dark enough for the end days.”

Upbeat summertime music plays outside the storefront of the popular ice cream shack. A line of people wraps around the small building whose End-of-the-World ice cream cakes are being sold for pennies. “Eat ice cream. Live carefree. Die happy.”

The old woman in line ahead of Joni is right. The sky isn’t dark enough for the world’s last three hundred days. The bright, clear skies make it all seem like a lie. Like there’s still hope left to live.

It isn’t right.

Sixty-five days ago, a screeching broadcast broke the calm of the midnight hour. Televisions being used as background noise in sleepy homes now held people captive worldwide. Eyes glued to the still-black screen, jaws dropped wide open, ears bewitched. Everyone was watching and waiting.

“It’s the end for us all… It’s the end for us all...” Bled the garbled voice of a woman through the speakers, repeating until the image of a host and his seated guest appeared onscreen.

“For those of you just tuning in, we are joined by the world-renowned fortune teller Madame Frieda Belle whose predictions—”

“They are far superior to mere ‘predictions.’” Madame Belle interrupted.

The host coughed into his fist. “Right, yes. My apologies. Madame Belle, just for the record, your fortunes have never been wrong, correct?”

“Never.” The older woman replied. Her voice was the grating sound of a garbage disposal and yet her pronunciation refined like one who’d sip even orange juice from fine China.

“You heard her, folks. Just before our commercial break, the Madame had just offered us a rather horrifying revelation, which you must have heard playing on your TV, courtesy of our broadcast team.

“‘It’s the end for us all.’” The host repeated the Madame’s words, releasing a nervous chuckle. “Madame Belle, could you elaborate on that? I’m sure we’d all… appreciate knowing what you mean.”

Madame Belle straightened her posture and said through pursed, red lips, “Well, Howard, I mean just what I’ve said. It’s the end for us all.”

“Excuse me, Madame, but that’s just it. I don’t—”

“Beginning now, the world will end in 365 days, coming to a close within this exact hour. Explosions will not wreck the land, and blood need not be recklessly spilled in hopes of putting a stop to the inevitable. The end will surely come in one year’s time, quickly and suddenly like a blanket over the eyes.”

The host chuckled, his earlier nerves more pronounced. “I-I see.” He said, and the room fell into a period of silence.

Viewers watching from the safety of their own homes took part in that silence, frozen in body and mind while their unquiet hearts hammered away Madame Frieda Belle’s words—doing the work their minds could not do. They knew the fortune teller’s scorecard and struggled to work denial into their sense of reason. She had to be right. Everyone knew she had to be right.

But not everyone had to accept it.

For weeks after the news, the streets of Joni’s city were wrought with filth and criminal chaos. Buildings were burning, ransacked businesses closing, and protesters occupying every empty crevice of the city hoping that the power in their signs would bring Madame Belle’s prophecy to its knees. They ripped her posters off walls and trampled her smiling eyes beneath their feet, replacing them with bounties that offered hundreds of thousands for her life.

Armed officers were stationed outside her house those first several weeks, their bodies blocking her front and back doors while thick hardwood slabs layered over her windows, now beat up and blackened, guarded against projectiles. Her massive, manicured front lawn was a fraction of the beauty it once was. Weeping families camped out on the patchy, scorched grass, damning Madame Belle and her devilish abilities to Hell. Distraught passersby fertilized her lawn with human waste, tossed over her gate with a slur or two for good measure.

Everything and everyone everywhere were changed in a moment, and it took months for the world to begin to accept it—because no matter what the world tried, its fortune never changed. Madame Frieda Belle was stuck like glue. Nothing and no one could get her to alter or downplay her words.

The world was set to end in 240 days and there was nothing anyone could do about it.

Joni was one of the people who had never questioned it.

Her world was shit, anyway.

On the night of the broadcast that shattered the dreams of people worldwide, Joni had been sitting alone on the couch in her one-bedroom apartment in an oversized long-sleeve shirt and pajama bottoms, a potato chip frozen halfway to her open mouth like it needed an invitation in. She’d stared wide-eyed at Madame Frieda Belle being hurriedly ushered offstage by various personnel as the in-studio audience erupted in a wild scene of panic and fury.

Joni could feel something intense coil in her heart, a feeling with a life of its own. Confusion. Fear.

The world… is ending? Why?! Her mind cried, No way—But if—if Madame Belle says so, it has to be true. I-I can’t believe it—

She thought about ‘pain’. H-How? When? No, Madame Belle already said that—but will I feel it? Will it hurt?

Sadness. Worry. Anger.

Everyone? She thought.

Excitement.

Her heart was racing with something so twisted and dense that she couldn’t find a single name for it, but her mind was whirring with ideas—opportunity—as tears now filled her eyes.

Joni jumped off the couch and left her potato chips scattered about the carpet, the raucous television crowd screaming behind her. Fast steps carried her to the bedroom where she fell to her knees beside her bed, tears jostled away from her eyelids at the impact. She thrust her arm beneath the bed as the wetness rolled down her cheeks.

For several seconds, her fingers hit nothing but air as she clawed blindly for the familiar metal of an old briefcase she’d been given as a kid. I need this. She thought to herself, her fingers straining, feeling small. The longer she felt for the briefcase, the stronger her desperation grew. Her tears hot and burning, her breath deepening. I need this!

More than ever before, she felt that she might die if she couldn’t find that briefcase, before the world even had the chance to disappear.

Damn it! Joni swore and flattened herself against the carpet, stretching her arm until her fingernail clanked against metal. Yes! Yes!! She felt for the small handle and yanked the briefcase toward her. Chest heaving, Joni pushed up into a sitting position, cradling the case against her chest like a lost child.

She sat still for several moments. Just breathing. Feeling cold metal against her skin.

From beyond her open bedroom door, the television played the monotonous tone of a disconnected broadcast, the network having yet to pick up another. The world is really ending, Joni thought and sat there listening to the chilling tone until it was replaced by tone-deaf, jolly standby music.

The change sparked courage in Joni. She released a slow breath together with her hold on the briefcase. Placing it on the floor in front of her crossed legs, she unfastened the security claps and popped the case open.

Inside was the tattered old drawing pad and a charcoal pencil she hadn’t touched in over fifteen years. Beside them was a polaroid-sized photo album and nothing else.

As clear as the day she’d been alive to tell her, the sound of her mom’s gentle voice saying, “No one can ever know about this, baby girl. We’ve got to be careful, always,” sprang to mind. Her grandma’s voice, “Go ahead, darling. The world is yours,” came right after.

Hesitation thrummed against her mind like an angry migraine. She tasted bile on her tongue; potent, jaw-tingling.

I shouldn’t, she thought and swallowed hard. She scrubbed a wrist across her wet face and paused to watch the tremble of her hand. “I shouldn’t…” she said aloud then closed her eyes tight knowing she needed more, much more—something like ‘happiness’—to convince herself.

“I—” she sobbed, forehead against her trembling hand, “I’m sorry, Mom. But I need this.”

Like ghosts, she felt the ticklish sensation of a pair of beautiful blue butterflies against her skin as she picked the pad and charcoal pencil up in her hands.

She propped the photo album up against the mirror in front of her, her back leaning against her bed, and she let her hand fly.

Joni was used to being her only company, used to the sound of her own choking sobs on lonelier nights. Tonight, the forbidden scritch of this pencil against that paper made the burn in her heart worse than ever.

Hope, harm to the loneliest heart.

And so, Joni drew carefully with tense hopes that she would never have to be alone again.

After five pages, a snot-and-tear-soaked sleeve, and a cramping hand, Joni finished drawing. Two hours had passed since the midnight announcement, and her stiff body was longing for bed.

Joni labored to stand, but her heart felt a tricky combination of both free and restless as she hit the mattress and closed her eyes. She listened to her heart as she fell asleep.

Please... It whispered to a world nearing its end.